Brand loyalty when it comes to auto insurance is simply getting too expensive. Sure, you get the “2-year discount,” the “loyal customer discount” or whatever your particular company happens to be pushing.
The reality is that I’ve had car insurance for almost 8 years now, and I’m on my 4th company. For whatever reason, the first 2-3 years of pricing are always competitive, and then I’m able to find much better pricing elsewhere.
That’s exactly what happened with Progressive this week. After using Snapshot last year to drive down the cost of my policy, my renewal documents came in the mail a few weeks ago.
Progressive raised my premiums from $693 per 6 months to $782 per 6 months for no apparent reason. That doesn’t sound like a lot, but I don’t behave like the typical frog in boiling water–when the price for something goes up, I complain and reevaluate my options in every way possible.
And so I did, and was pleasantly surprised. Just like the previous switches, I was able to find two competitive policies — one from Geico (free quote link) and another from Esurance. Both were similar, but I was actually getting a bit more policy from Esurance and decided to go with them.
Policy Comparison
My new 6-month premium is just under $600, a $200 improvement over Progressive that will save me more than $30 a month. The terms of my policy are also much better.
I now have $100 and $250 deductibles for my comprehensive and collision coverage, where before they were $500 and $1,000, respectively.
Esurance offers a nice set of discounts that drove down the cost of my policy by about 30% over regular price. The ones that were specifically applied to my account include:
- Multi-car discount for having two cars insured at the same time – saved me $79
- Paypal discount for paying my premium using Paypal – saved me $70
- Claim-free discount for having good insurance history – another $60
- Fast5 Discount for starting my quote online – 5% or about $33
- Switch & Save discount for switching to eSurance – another 5%, $33
- “Additional discounts” without a clear reason added another $18
Overall, the savings added up to almost $300.
Getting a Quote is Easy
Getting insurance quotes these days is easy, because companies have figured out how to tap into a database that keeps track of the cars in your household. That means getting 2-3 quotes from different companies is a matter of 10-15 minutes where it used to take hours or more.
Most of the time spent getting quotes is to tweak them to get just the right coverage you want, not entering the same biographical information over and over.
I recommend trying Esurance.com today as well as a few others to get the best price.
Note: This post contains affiliate links for some of the companies I mentioned and recommend.
Fiscal Fizzle 
I have progressive now, I wish I could use snapshot (but I live in California). I was actually surprised that they were cheaper than GEICO (a company I used to work for). Also, you get a huge discount for paying with PayPal, that’s ridiculous!
Best of luck with esurance. I have been with Geico forever as they are still the cheapest for me here in CA (I shop around at least once a year). We recently had a DUI driver who was insured by esurance hit one of our cars that was parked on the street. Dealing with esurance claims was neither easy nor professional. I expect professional friendly service as I have always gotten it from Geico. If you do ever make a claim let us know how your experience goes.
Thanks for the post. I am switching to Esurance when my present insurance expired next month. I have Allstate now and Esurance is an Allstate company but I save $100 by switching over to Esurance.
Thanks for your post. I switched today from Liberty Mutual to Esurance. My policy with Liberty Mutual will expire very shortly and will increase as well, I have being with them for 2 years. The new policy with Esurance is a little cheaper than the new one, but at least is some money that I can save.
The process of signing up was very quick and simple, as yours. Let’s see how it goes with Esurance.
This guy is a math genius!
Fourth paragraph states he was paying …$693 a month to $782 a month… now it turns into a 6 month policy later on. Wich is it?
Then the bulleted breakdown of prices states a near $300 in discounts. Now hes paying just under $600 for 6 months I’m guessing.
693-300= 393
782-300= 482
is the 482 just under 600 dollars if so this guy doesnt know the rules to rounding or any idea what just under is.
If i said I was paying just under 600 i might be saying 575 or 560.. not 480.
Esurance has quoted me a better price as well with better deductables.
Just don’t believe everything you read or hear without questioning one persons misrepresented idea. Some of it is true just not all of it.
Thank you for pointing out the typos, Gary. (I’m “this guy.”) I apologize for the confusion, it was certainly not intended to misrepresent.
The $300 discounts are already included in the “just under 600,” which is still accurate as my 6-month premium. So presumably the “raw” premium would have been 600+300=900 without any discounts.